Monday, October 31, 2011

Let's franken! Inspired by Butter London's The Black Knight

Hello dear readers! Today's post is a doozy. VERY pic heavy! So I'm gonna be a party pooper and put this post under a jump. SO SORRY! Get prepared and start heatin' up your high speed internet!

Have you ever frankened before? It's the process of combining polishes or polishes and pigments to make "frankenpolishes." When Butter London's "The Black Knight" came out, a few of my Facebook polish friends decided they would try to dupe it -- on the cheap! I have followed both of their recipes to the best of my ability and thought I'd share the processes and outcomes for both.

The geniuses behind these two polishes? Jessica from Hello, Polish! and Laurie N. (no blog)!

Franken A by Jessica, Franken B by Laurie

Franken A, Franken B; slight blur for better color effect

Hit the jump to discover the recipes for each, and see how these polishes look on my nails!

This franken starts out with only two ingredients! Sinful Colors Frenzy and China Glaze Liquid Leather.

Pour out a little less than a fourth of the Sinful Colors Frenzy. If you have an empty polish bottle lying around, pour it into that, and save the rest to franken with later! Fill the empty space that you created in the Sinful Colors bottle with some Liquid Leather. Shake it up like CRAZY! Shake it till your arms fall off!

Laurie's franken has a few more ingredients, but nothing too complicated! I'm sure you guys can handle it. You'll need a black (China Glaze Liquid Leather), Wet N Wild Wild Shine in Sparked, LA Colors Jewel Tone, and a loose scattered holo glitter (I'm using the Fantasy Makers Confetti glitter by Wet N Wild that was part of their Halloween line -- if you can't find that, Laurie used a loose holo glitter by Coastal Scents).

For this one, I frankened into the China Glaze bottle because it was almost empty. Basically though, if you are frankening into the LA Colors bottle, you should empty out about a third of it.

Add in a touch of the Wet N Wild Sparked. You don't need much of this! A little bit goes a long way. Then, add in some of the loose holo glitter. You can use a drinking straw cut into a shovel to scoop it in to your franken. I used two little straw scoops worth of the holo glitter for mine, but I think I went a little overboard! Laurie was much more conservative with her holo glitter. It's just a different effect -- up to you! Then, fill up the rest of the bottle with your black.

This one will need a lot of shaking because of all of the loose dry glitter. So shake shake shake shake shake shake. And then shake some more. Think you're done? Nope. Keep shaking.

Here's how it looks on my nails! I took these photos before I cut my nails, can you tell? ;)

And here are Laurie's photos of her version, with the more sparse holo glitter - I think that her version looks closer to the actual Black Knight than mine does!

I'm very much in love with both of these polishes! They each bring something different but uniquely beautiful. I hope you enjoyed these recipes from these two lovely ladies, and give them a shout if you try either of their formulas!

14 comments

I like the second one, by Laurie, a lot!!! Like would buy it!!! I think someone needs to get into Franken-makin(Ha! Say that out loud!). Nice post. I actually had to ask someone a few weeks ago what Franken's were. Do they always have to be mixed polishes? Or can you just throw random craft items into a clear coat?

@Patricia - There are no rules in frankening! Sometimes when you mix in loose glitter or other craft items, it can react with the polish and the color can melt off of it. It's hard to tell what will work though and what won't, so usually people just try stuff and hope it works! That's part of the fun!

While looking for some ingredients to franken this with, I noticed that the Sally Hansen Rockstar Pink might also work - already has a great mixture of red, purple, pink, and blue, but smaller particles than the Sinful Colors